Ways to save when growing your Ecommerce Business

Sep 18, 2013

Online business owners need to make all the savings they can to develop and expand their businesses. An online ecommerce start up needs a considered plan to ensure they can keep afloat, stay competitive and keep customers coming in through the door. Here are our top tips for saving capital when growing your business.

1. Payment Options

Payment processing fees can become problematic and amount to a large cost on a monthly basis – especially when people begin to order more and more. You should always give your customers multiple payment options but it is also worthwhile monitoring which methods of payment are most popular with your customer base.

If you find there are methods which your clients simply don’t use then you can remove them from your offering and save on the monthly processing fees involved. If at any point a customer contacts you about the removed payment process you can discuss this with them personally.

2. Considered Investments

Making investments into your ecommerce business can be costly especially if you spread them out as you develop. It makes more sense to make all your necessary considered investments at the beginning, whether they’re for web design or marketing, rather than searching for cheap alternatives at a later date. Rather than utilising cheap methods as you go, invest at the start and reap the rewards in the long term.

3. Develop a Discount Strategy

Online customers expect more for their money and they expect a discount. The majority of online purchases are made with a discount offer or coupon and this means it’s become expected. You should develop a discount coupon strategy – perhaps have regular monthly discounts as well as larger seasonal specials and consider the breadth and depth of your discount offers. Each discount should be pre-planned, even if it’s a 24-hour special, and email marketing should be utilised in conjunction with this to ensure the best returns. All discounts effect your profit margins so be sensible with your choices.

4. Outsource to Specialists

There are some aspects of your business that are better handled by specialists. As a small business expanding you should be considering product fulfilment support. The cost of hiring your own fulfilment team and the costs of warehouse hire can be significant so when you work with an order fulfilment partner like ourselves, you are saving a fortune in the long run. You’re also buying expertise and experience as well as the fulfilment service.

5. Identify and Exploit Effective Marketing Techniques

Marketing your business can be expensive. Even marketing online can be costly whether you’re using PPC, SEO, social media and/or email marketing to promote your business there are costs involved. The best way to save promoting online is through using web analytics to work out exactly which techniques work for your business. This way you can limit to the one or two streams which actually generate business for your company.

You could find out that the money you’re investing in the expensive PPC campaign is not actually resulting in any ROI whilst the time you spend on social media is highly effective.

Making savings whilst you’re trying to grow your business is essential if you want to succeed and utilising some of our tips will help you along your way.

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